This passage is devoted to one major objective: to instruct us concerning our perception of God the Father.

He is not a reluctant stranger who can be bullied into bestowing His many gifts simply because of our many words. That is not the issue for being persistent.

He is not a malicious tyrant who takes vicious glee in the tricks that He plays on His subjects—by giving a scorpion rather than an egg.

He is not an indulgent grandfather who provides everything that is requested of Him. He does not spoil His children.

He is our heavenly Father who graciously and willingly bestows good gifts when they are needed in answer to prayer.

The key is "good gifts when they are needed." God's good gifts may come a little bit at a time. Sometimes, we are not even aware that it is occurring, yet He has been supplying the very thing that we asked for. Somehow or another, we are not sharp enough spiritually to see it.

The parable clarifies one aspect of why we must be persistent in prayer, but there is another that deals with our perceptions of God's power and His purpose and how our requests fit into them. Unfortunately, we often misunderstand God's role as Creator and tend to think of Him narrowly as being our Benefactor. He is both Benefactor and Creator. However, we tend to emphasize the Benefactor aspect, while He tends to emphasize the Creator aspect. So when we feel a need, and our desire is great because we feel that the need is urgent, we want our desire filled immediately because we see it as the answer.

We may be absolutely correct that it is the answer and that what we are asking for is good in God's eyes—it is according to His will. However, there is more to our request from God's point of view. He lives in a different timeframe than we do; time does not mean the same thing to Him as it does to us. In addition, His perception of our request is different because He is looking at it from the vantage point of His purpose rather than from our limited goals, which are often to have relief, strength, a gift, or power so that we might be able to serve Him better. The request may be good and entirely justified, but God is still looking at it differently than we are.

Prior to God's intervention in their lives, when they did not have a relationship with Him, the Galatians (in particular) and the world (in general) were in bondage to and slaves of the Babylonish system, even a worship of demons—"so-called gods" (I Corinthians 8:5).

In the New Testament, there are two Greek words that are translated as "to know"—ginooskein (NT: 1097) and eidenai (NT: 1492). According to Vincent's Word Studies in the New Testament, ginooskein is knowledge grounded in personal experience or apprehension of external impressions. It is used to describe relationships, even up to the most intimate of relationships—marriage ("And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived"). Eidenai, the word used in Galatians 4:8, is a mental perception in contrast with conjecture or knowledge derived from others.

The Jews at least knew of God and knew about God, but they did not really know God in terms of having a relationship with Him. He revealed Himself to Israel when He brought them out of Egypt and gave them the law, and the knowledge that such a God existed never really passed from all of the generations. After a remnant of the two southern tribes, Judah and Benjamin, returned to Jerusalem from captivity, they restored the proper worship of God and began adhering to the law that He had given to them. Later, various sects (Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, etc.) arose and began putting their own spin on the original God-given law. They wanted to make absolutely certain that they would not transgress His law in even the smallest degree, so they would not have to go back into captivity.

What developed was Halakhah, which was loosely based on the Old Covenant but contained ordinances and judgments that are far from God's original ideal. This, in combination with Hellenism, developed into what is now called Judaism. So at the base of all this, the Jews at least know that there is one true God, but their emphasis on Halakhah made them reject Christ when He came as a man. There was at least a "mental perception" (eidenai), even though there was not a real relationship (ginooskein).

The Gentiles, on the other hand, did not even have a concept (eidenai) of the true God. They worshipped and served a wide variety of pagan deities, and in actuality, this worship was inspired by and centered on demons. In the letter to the Galatians, Paul was addressing not only the dangerous slide into Judaism, but also the return to pagan rites inspired by Gnosticism.

David C. Grabbe

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